KM World’s 100 Companies that Matter – Look at the Missing

KM World annually lists the top 100 providers of products and services that “exemplify the true ideals of knowledge management – the ones whose products and services continue to fundamentally transform the ways organizations operate.” In the past the large consulting firms were all over this list. This year none of them are there. These firms are still around. I guess they moved on to other things.

In fact there are few consulting companies of any size. The list is almost all software vendors. Perhaps this reflects the focus of the magazine but what does it say about knowledge management? Most people have always said that the hardest part is not technology. Tom Davenport said in the mid 90s that if you spend the majority of your budget for knowledge management on technology you are in trouble.

It also seems that many companies have adopted knowledge management, not always by this name. There are others that are just getting started who have come to see the value of supporting their knowledge-based work force. I guess the absence of consulting firms from the top 100 may just mean that you cannot make big money consulting on knowledge management. That may be a good thing.

Comments

[James Robertson]

There are obviously plenty of KM consulting firms, although I would think they are probably smaller businesses now. (In Australia at least, the big consulting firms burnt their bridges in KM a few years back, and then shut down their externally-facing KM teams.)

From what I've seen, the big factor is that in the US, KM = technology. At least in the minds of most people (if not those actually in the KM community). I recently chatted to a well-known personality in an affiliated space, and he was genuinely unaware that there was anything to KM beyond advanced search tools and the like...

[Bill Ives]

James

Thanks for your comment and I certainly agree completely in all of what you said. KM is still defined too much as a technology. If you do a Google Defines on knowledge management, most, if not all of the definitions are simply technology. KM is also better done by small consulting firms becuase of the need for more senior people with deep expertise (especially in the non-technical aspects) than armies of junior people.